Managing Credit/Debt

I just sent a payment of $507.99 to Wells Fargo to pay off my private student loan.  Now my highest interest loan is my Grad Plus loan at 8.25%.  I probably won’t pay anything more on my student loans until I finish school.  My plan for my extra money now is to max out my Roth IRA.  Since this is my last month of working before returning to school I need to contribute all I can now.

Last month I decided to transfer the balance of my private student loan from Wells Fargo to Capital One to take advantage of a low-interest balance transfer offer.  It was only going to save me a few dollars in interest but since it would only take a couple minutes online I decided to go ahead and do it.  That ended up being a mistake.  The payment from Capital One never showed up at Wells Fargo.  I had to spend several hours on the phone to get it straightened out.  Capital One has told me that they are stopping payment on the check they sent and will credit my account.  I’m hoping that they actually do this.

Dealing with Capital One has been a PITA.  I’ve had to spend 20-30 minutes on hold or more every time I called them.  Then when I do finally get through to a representative they can’t help me and have to connect me with an account manager.  This means another 20-30 minutes.  Every time I have called them they are experiencing unusually high call volume.  If you have unusually high call volume every day wouldn’t that make it normal call volume?  Capital One is my oldest credit card so I don’t want to cancel it but I may not use it anymore.
Wells Fargo has been much better to deal with.  I can get through to a person in just a few minutes and they actually seem to know what they are doing.

Before I do another balance transfer I’ll have to consider if the risk of it being screwed up is worth the potential reward in savings.

My savings/debt payment percentage for November was only 24%.  This is because my balance transfer of my student loan from Wells Fargo to Capital One was screwed up.  I have about $500 slated for debt payment from November that I carried over to this month.  I don’t want to make any more payments until the balance transfer is straightened out.  I should be able to completely pay my student loan off this month and make my goal of 50% of my income going to savings and debt payment.

I managed to put 43% of my October income towards savings and paying down my private student loan.  The student loan is not in repayment yet but I’m paying it off ahead of time since it has an 11.25%  interest rate.  It is also my smallest student loan.

My goal is for 50% of my income to go to savings and debt payment.  I won’t make that goal for November because the balance transfer of my student loan from Wells Fargo to Capital One is all screwed up and I’m not paying anything until it is straightened out.  Capital One says they sent payment to Wells Fargo on Nov. 14 but as of today Wells Fargo  hasn’t received it.

When I resume school in January I won’t be working so any income I have will go to basic expenses.  This makes December my last chance to make my 50% goal.  With the money I’m carrying over from this month into December I should easily meet the goal.

One of my credit cards sent me a balance transfer offer for 6.99% with no transaction fee.  Since my private student loan is at 11.75% I decided to go ahead and transfer it to the credit card.  The loan balance is just a little over $1000 right now and I hope to pay it off by the end of the year.  If I do pay it off that quick the lower interest rate won’t make much difference but since it didn’t cost anything to transfer I figured I might as well save whatever little bit of interest I can.